I was finally able to take my ESQ1 home from a local music store after paying it off over the past couple weeks. Looking forward to cook up some decent sounds, I set it up, plugged it in, flipped the switch - nothing The display flickers up for a moment then stays dark, no sound, nothing. What happened? It was working fine when I put the first $$ on it although it showed a low battery message, but it worked just fine. Now it's dead in my studio. Any suggestions?

yeah, take it back and have them fix the battery that finally died._________________Garret: It's so retro.
EGM: What does retro mean to you?
Parker: Like, old and outdated.Home,My Studio,and another view

You think the dying battery caused this? Shouldn't it normally lose it's internal sounds and replace them with "Brass1"? Would you recommend a hard reset just to see if it's not a totally different issue? Replacing the battery would be no problem for me, if I can make sure that nothing else is wrong. They took $75 off the original price just because that message popped up. Well I guess if nothing else works, then I'll have to take it back to town again.

You're in your honeymoon period right now.
Whatever you do, don't try to fix it yourself. If it isn't the battery and you try to fix it, you're screwed. Make them fix this thing.
And whatever you do, don't admit that you know ANYTHING about it, or tried to fix it in any way. They will immediately claim that you broke it.
If you can't take this back for a day or two, call them NOW and tell them the thing didn't work when you got it home. Write down who you talked to. Don't give them any excuse to weasel out of this.

UPDATE: I talked to the guy who sold me the synth and he also believed that it's an issue with the battery being dead, and he also said that he doesn't do repairs and only buys/sells used/new gear, but at least he referred me to a place that does repairs and offered to take the synth back, if it's anything worse than just the battery. Wellll..... being the impatient fool I am I decided to take a chance since the synth has been serviced before (according to the previous owner) and tried the hard reset following these instructions
To my delight she works again and am happy to find out that her OS version is 3.5

There was also a Casio Cz-1 for $250 and a Ensoniq VFX for $300. Hmmmm.... what do you guys think, are the prices reasonable?

PS: the link doesn't work right. it puts you to the end of the faq list. Just scroll up to it.

Damn.. now the parameters on EVERY page fluctuate between different settings (not all at the same time, but the ones I try to change. This seems to happen after some time messing with it, but subsides when turned off for 5 minutes or so. Oh, what fresh hell is this now? Could this happen because of the dead battery? Worn data slider? Power supply issue? I feel tempted to just take the battery out and see how she behaves then. Does the lithium battery have to be the same type/brand or can I use something from Radioshack or Target? I was thinking of soldering the battery on wires, wrap it in electrical tape or use a battery case and hotglue it into the empty area of the casing, so that should the battery ever leak it won't do it all over the circuit boards.. would this be recommendable?

Update: Turned the synth back on again and it's been running fine for about 45 minutes now. Repeatedly changed various settings on different menues without any notable issues. Keeping my fingers crossed..

Update #2: Played around on it for a couple hours, no issues. Turned it off and turned it on when I got back to it. 5 minutes later the selected parameter values start to fluctuate again. Hmmmmm....

i don't recall my ESQ1 ever doing anything quite like that. But it could be a few things.

Might be power supply related. The battery could be still a problem and yes, you can substitute with an equivalent (or better) same voltage.

Dirty encoder might be at fault, but you say all parameters seem to be affected so it points more at the circuitry. It's also possible that a component is failing like a capacitor or something in the clock. But it's doubtful. Is the unit clean, no rust/oxidation? if there was corrosion inside it would be cause for concern.

They were built well, overall. But they are also pushing 25 years old, so there's a lot of possibilities for failures.

You have opened it up yet?_________________Garret: It's so retro.
EGM: What does retro mean to you?
Parker: Like, old and outdated.Home,My Studio,and another view

I had it opened up to do a hard reset since it didn't boot up to begin with. As far as I could see the boards seemed clean and I didn't notice any corrosion or battery leakage going on. It appears to me that the glitch happens when I change parameters/pages too quickly, but then again it takes about 5-10 minutes of messing with settings for the issue to pop up. Like I said before not all parameters fluctuate at the same time, but the ones that are selected (cursor). So I'm starting to think that it might be an issue with the data slider or the circuit related to it. I'll have to take all of the boards out and give them a good cleaning. I did some research and came across some information about power supply issues here
So if nothing else works then I guess I'll have to recap the PS. However the issue went away when I did a soft reset on the synth and it worked fine again until I decided to go to bed. Keeping my fingers crossed...

PS: About battery - Can I use a rechargeable battery and have it recharge every time I power up the synth? What would I have to change to make it work?

PPS: Is it possible to switch the cpu with a faster one? I think I remember reading something about this somewhere and it was mentioned that the original cpu can easily get overwhelmend, which is noticeable in the synth's permormance, e. g. LFO slows down when many keys are played too quickly, etc. I think the cpu should be a 68000 type.

Ick... I replaced the internal battery with a Energizer 3V lithium battery. I soldered two wires to the battery and soldered that where the old battery was, wrapped battery in electrical tape, stuck it in the far end of the casing. At first it worked fine, for less than 5 minutes that is, Then the fluctuating parameters happened again. Did a soft reset, but to my amazement it switched back and forth between the "low battery" message and the sound bank, then finally gave a message "system error soft reset failed press any key to continue" Since that it keeps bringing up the low battery message despite of having a fresh battery in it. I made especially sure that the polarity is right and the wires are securely soldered on the remains of the lugs from the old battery. I'm at the end of the rope.

It seems there are quite a few likely areas to investigate. The PSU is also a good bet. 5 minutes is enough time for components to warm up, just a thought._________________Garret: It's so retro.
EGM: What does retro mean to you?
Parker: Like, old and outdated.Home,My Studio,and another view

I don't think it matters that much so long as the battery provides sufficient current. The system lockups can have many causes. If you're running 3.5 you don't need the battery unless you're saving patches._________________Garret: It's so retro.
EGM: What does retro mean to you?
Parker: Like, old and outdated.Home,My Studio,and another view

so any definitive hints on what I'm dealing with here? I mean yeah the power supply could be the cause but it could also be something totally different. I really need a good hint now. I think I'm gonna rip the whole thing apart and check every board with a voltmeter, press on socketed ICs, etc.. see what happens.

One thing you might try -
Start at the the top right corner - reheat every solder joint till you hit the bottom left corner.

I repaired one of these for a friend a few years back. I'm not sure what happened to it, and neither was he. It just stopped working. I opened it up and noticed that one of the traces on the PCB was completely burned off the board. I grabbed a piece of jumper wire and kludged it back together - it worked great. Just weird.

Anyway I hope you can get this resolved. It's always nice to see these old beasts walk again....

PSU caps that old should be replaced. Socketed chips should be "clicked" (NOT taken out) to reseat them. Look for stressed joints. Look for corrosion. Look for anything that doesn't look right.

It's an old piece of equipment and as you were not the original owner, you don't know how well it was cared for._________________Garret: It's so retro.
EGM: What does retro mean to you?
Parker: Like, old and outdated.Home,My Studio,and another view

I think I know what I probably did wrong with the battery - the + lug had two "legs" that went into two different pads. What I did was to cut off the top part of the lug, but soldered the plus wire to only one of the remaining legs. That would probably explain why the warning message popped up again. I'm gonna fix that and see what happens.

Update: Nevermind.. both spots are connected by a trace, so it didn't matter after all.
Update2: finally undid everything (took the battery completely out, did a physical hard reset again) Now it behaves fine although I can't save anything now. I'm gonna leave it on for an hour or so and see how it behaves then. Why did the battery fail? It should have worked? Where's the easy button on that thing...Last edited by patrickvf1976 on Sun Feb 26, 2012 4:27 pm; edited 1 time in total

The battery is just one minor issue. So long as you didn't put the battery in backwards, you don't need to worry so much about it._________________Garret: It's so retro.
EGM: What does retro mean to you?
Parker: Like, old and outdated.Home,My Studio,and another view

The polarity was definately right. I just don't understand what went wrong. anyways I'll report back if she goes crazy again after being on for a while. Anothier thing is that the battery lost ALOT of juice. When I first checked it, it was at 3.19V, now it's down to 2.94! That's not good at all.

PS: I don't see why the battery would affect the over all functionality of the synth. It only keeps the memory alive so it shouldn't affect anything else unless the battery starts to leak, right?

At issue is how much current is being drawn. By normal standards it should not be much.

And yes, if the battery isn't there at all, it only affects the storing of programs and sequences. Assuming you have 3.5 installed, of course.

What's the serial number on the beast, if you don't mind my asking?_________________Garret: It's so retro.
EGM: What does retro mean to you?
Parker: Like, old and outdated.Home,My Studio,and another view

No issues so far, but I'm taking it with a grain of salt. I'll have to let it run for several hours for a couple of days to be really sure. I hope the battery issue can be fixed because I like to be able to save what I cook up without fuss.. 1987... I was in middle school then.. good ol' times

Still got the same crap going on.. It's either the parameters spaz out or it fails to do a soft reset. I'm pissed.

PS: Since my issues seem likely to be caused by power supply issues, how would I go about testing the power supply and finding out if something needs to be replaced? Do I check it when it's turned on or do I leave it off and check the individual components with a voltmeter? I'm a little hesitant about messing with a high voltage circuit. I'm more comfortable working on low voltage circuits. Are there any guides on how to deal with a quirky power supply like this one?

Maybe check out this site if you don't already know it - http://www.buchty.net/ensoniq/
He has schematics - just scroll down to the Tech and Non-Tech Information

He also has an ESQ1/SQ80 forum. I never registered, so I din't search, but maybe someone there can help.

I am pretty sure that a dead battery has no effect other than that you lose all patches every time you power off. There is also a Librarian software app which will allow you to transfer patches between ESQ1 and computer via MIDI, so all is not lost without the battery.

I started getting the low battery warning a while ago, and finally replaced the battery. I chose to ignore a link from his site which warned of dire consequences if you didn't solder the replacement in. I didn't want to search for the specific battery, so I found a button cell and holder at the local RatShack and soldered that in, then hot-glued the battery holder on the base of the chassis close to the edge of the PCB. That way I can easily replace the battery next time.

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